Elite influencer success combines person with corporate form

Evidence

As we will explain here, in our concluding chapter, influencer culture conflates person not only with commodity but with corporation. Throughout this book, we’ve seen hints of this conflation—when Jeffree Star discusses his business portfolio and his love of investing, or when Jimmy Donaldson funds start-up after start-up in the name of his YouTube persona. Star and Donaldson serve as exemplars, as ideals, as kinds of people others desire to emulate. Their model of influence is not merely one in which a few otherwise “normal” people happen to be good at getting attention, using social media’s capacity to broadcast one’s daily life. It is not merely the case that the YouTube elite embrace a platform to amplify their voice—a voice that possesses economic value when leveraged into sponsorships and brand collaborations. Rather, the success of Star and Donaldson comes, in part, from a combination of person and corporate form. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 343

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains why the person-corporation conflation, not mere attention-getting, drives elite influencer success.
• XREF: Actual named exemplars (Star, Donaldson) give the reader concrete anchors for the Corpocene case. — connects to: Influencers are vocational, sustained, highly branded social media stars. — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame…, 215
• QUESTION: What exactly remains the ‘commodity’ and where surplus is realized when the self becomes corporate — flagged for the reader’s labor-theory analysis.